When Pam Grier’s breakthrough movie Coffy was released in 1973, American International Pictures was clearly confident that her eponymous character was a supercharged heroine who would excite filmgoers.
“She’s the ‘GODMOTHER’ of them all!”, exclaimed the poster, linking the African-American Coffy to Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone in The Godfather (released the previous year). More enthusiastically still, the poster also called her “The Baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad That Ever Hit Town!”
Grier’s starring role in Coffy marked an upgrade in her screen status, following a series of smaller roles in exploitative prison flicks. Her proficiency in energetic action sequences and her openness to frank bodily display made her a perfect fit for American cinema in an era permitting more violence and nudity on screen than before. But Coffy saw her for the first time as the main propulsive force in a Blaxploitation movie.
